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Sunday, 19 April 2015

River Tyne (B&Q) 19th April 2015

After resisting the urge to head to the coast today by myself I decided to take my daughter out fishing for the first time.

As it happened she decided she would rather bake with her mum (after I had bought the bait!) and so my son decided he wanted to come instead.

To save time and ensure a comfortable session I headed to a mark I regularly fish with him opposite B&Q on Scotswood Rd. It was a beautiful day and conditions looked perfect.

I usually fish the same spot on this mark and to be honest I had always assumed that it was the same mud flats that most of the top end of the river was comprised of. I had swung by earlier just after low water to find that not to be the case. I snapped a few useful pics of the features in the area and I chose a few marks along this stretch to fish later in the day.

I decided to fish the light gear as I usually do on this mark, You can fish with beachcasters and multiplier reels if you wish but I have always found that if you do then you can't catch much when only the smaller fish are biting. With the light rods you get great sport no matter the size of the fish.

I was using my Shakespeare Alpha Bass and my son was using an Overload Spin (8ft) that I had purchased new for a tenner a few months back....bargain!

Both of us used small spinning reels loaded with 15lb. Rigs were kept as simple as possible with small hooks, small bomb weights and short snoods.

We started fishing a few hours before High Water in the first of two marks I had identified. Almost immediately we had bites. I started with a small codling of around 9 inches after 5 minutes and then my son had his first ever codling soon after!

This set the tone for the rest of the 2.5hrs we fished. We had 5 fish each and lost probably as many again. All were codling except from a flounder that my son had on his last cast. None of them were huge but all of them were great fun to catch.

The other guys on the same stretch had very little from what I could tell.

As I learned it really does pay to research some marks at Low water before fishing them at High.